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Ex-pilot for food charity cites waste

Posted: Sunday, December 05, 2010

By Merritt Melancon

MONROE - Angel Food Ministries supporters blame ongoing lawsuits and lagging sales for dozens of layoffs over the past six months, but the founders' former pilot attributes them to wasteful management practices.

Managers at Angel Food Ministries, once one of the five largest employers in Walton County, have laid off about 75 employees in the past few months.

Angel Food's founders, however, still are enjoying company perks to live the high life, according an ex-employee.

Founders Joe and Linda Wingo continued to use the company's jet for private trips even as they were laying off workers for lack of money, said Wesley Allgood, a former security coordinator and pilot who was among those laid off.

"They say, 'We can't afford to keep you anymore,' but Halloween weekend we're taking them to Jacksonville, Fla., to attend the (Georgia-Florida) football game on the (Angel Food) jet," Allgood said.

"I understand that companies have to have layoffs," he said. "If you're not doing good, to keep it going, you might have to. But you cut this crap out, too. You don't spend like this. You don't buy new cars. You don't take personal trips."

Angel Food Ministries buys food in bulk from national suppliers, repackages it and then sells boxes of groceries for $30 each - about half of what the food would cost retail, according to the nonprofit. The Christian organization started in 1994 by providing discounted groceries to 34 families from Atlanta to Athens; at its peak in 2008, Angel Food sold low-cost food to hundreds of thousands of families in more than 44 states.

The FBI raided Angel Food headquarters in February 2009, carting away boxes of files and paperwork in an investigation that continues but has led to no official action.

A few weeks after the raid, two former employees and board members sued the Wingos, claiming the couple used the nonprofit to enrich themselves and demanding an audit of the organization's books.

This spring, former spokesman Judah Englemeyer blamed declining sales, bad publicity and the economy for the charity's financial straits. He is no longer on staff with the ministry, Englemeyer said this week.

Angel Food managers executed the most recent round of layoffs, when Allgood and about 10 others lost their jobs, the week before Thanksgiving, Allgood said. Less than a month before, Allgood flew the Wingos to the game in Jacksonville, according to company flight records.

Allgood also flew the Wingo family from Monroe to Canton in October for a memorial service for Joe Wingo's father, according to flight records. He flew to Pennsylvania repeatedly between April 2009 and August 2010 so that Linda Wingo could visit a holistic doctor there, Allgood said.

Angel Food Ministries would not comment about the flights except to say that they were for the good of the ministry.

"Each flight of the Angel Food Ministries' airplane furthers the business and mission of Angel Food Ministries," spokeswoman Becky English wrote in an e-mailed statement Thursday.

The trips to Pennsylvania and Jacksonville were ostensibly on company business, and flight records include the names of employees who accompanied the Wingos.

While Joe and Linda Wingo, their son, Wes Wingo, and his fiancée brought two employees of Angel Food subsidiary Good Hope Transportation with them to Jacksonville, the only business they had there was watching Florida beat Georgia, according to Allgood.

The Wingos billed their multiple trips to Pennsylvania as training trips for three employees who were becoming outreach ministers. They would accompany the Wingos on trips, and were trained by an outreach minister in Derry, Pa. While the workers were training, Linda or Joe Wingo - and sometimes both - would visit their doctor, Allgood said.

Allgood sometimes felt pressure to change his flight records to make overtly personal trips seem more official than they were, he said. After the October trip to Canton, Joe Wingo asked him directly to change a flight record to make it seem like a business trip.

"This was totally personal; there was no question about it," Allgood said. "But the bad part was (Angel Food chief pilot) Rodney Ethridge asked (Joe Wingo,) 'Hey, I've got to finish this trip checklist.' He was asked, and I was asked to find the local host site (the churches that distribute Angel Food groceries) number for Canton, Ga., and put it on there to make it look like we went and visited them. And we didn't."

Allgood and Ethridge did not falsify their flight records, he said.

The FBI called Allgood almost immediately after he was laid off to interview him about the ministry, and told him that falsifying flight records would have constituted a felony, he said.

At the same time, former Angel Food Ministries board members are pressing a Walton County Superior Court judge to hold the Wingos and Angel Food Ministries in contempt. Former board members Daniel Prather and Craig Atnip claim the ministry and the Wingos have failed to comply with an judicial order issued to settle their 2009 lawsuit, according to court documents.

Prather and Atnip sued to remove the Wingo family from Angel Food's board in early 2009, claiming the family siphoned about $2.7 million out of the ministry's coffers for personal use. Attorneys settled the lawsuit in spring 2009, on the condition that the Wingos allow an independent audit of the books, repay money they owed from misusing company credit cards and turn over ownership of the jet to the ministry.

Joe Wingo had been leasing the jet to ministry for several years at a profit, according to court papers.

Prather and Atnip filed a motion asking Judge John Ott to hold the Wingos in contempt for failing to provide an independent audit of the nonprofit's books. They also want access to the books at Emmanuel Praise Church, which auditors found took in about $7 million from Angel Food Ministries over the years, according to court documents.

Ed Tolley, an attorney for Linda Wingo and Emmanuel Praise Church, where Joe Wingo is the pastor, says the Wingos and the ministry have complied with the order. Tolley has asked the judge to issue a restraining order to keep auditors from the church's records.

The recent rounds an layoffs are due to the mounting legal fees from dealing with the ongoing lawsuit, Tolley said.

"We think that the motion for contempt is frivolous," he said. "At this point the continued legal expense has hurt a lot of people in Walton. It's cost a lot of people their jobs and that's serious, especially at this time of year."